Children Of The Poor Clares (14 page)

Sally Johnson was among the small children rescued from the Infirmary on the night of the fire. She had been placed in the orphanage as a baby in 1940, one of the first under the age of six to be taken in, and she left in 1955 at the age of sixteen. Her memories were often, word for word, the same as those of the previous generation in the 1920s and 1930s.

“We lived off porridge, bread and potatoes. We ate off metal dishes and drank out of enamel mugs. We had two slices of bread and cocoa made with water for breakfast. In the autumn a farmer brought in apples; that was marvellous. The favourite job was to take up the gardener’s tea. He’d give you a tomato or something if you put in extra sugar. The best dinner was on Sunday; we got a nice pudding with jam and custard and tea. We all loved tea. After a while we got sausages every Saturday. I still remember the first time it happened. The butcher came up to kill a pig now and again and we had pig stew for ages. Everyone loathed it. They killed it right there in the yard. We didn’t mind that, it was the stew we hated, all greasy. They’d only give us the fatty bits anyway. We’d eat the vegetable peelings, turnips and such, out of the pits in the garden. The chickens got better food than us; we used to take their food.”

Department
of
Education
Annual
Report
1949:
Dietary
scale
subject
to
careful
scrutiny.
minimum
of
one
pint
of
milk
per
day.

Sally’s memories of the haphazard choosing of clothes showed that little had changed
:
“In the summer we wore gingham dresses and jumpers and skirts in the winter. Miss O’Reilly—Fag O’Reilly we called her—made the clothes. Under the dresses we wore chemises and a bodice and a grey flannel petticoat and thick black stockings. A pile of shoes was taken out in a heap, and you got what you could and hoped it fitted. I once had a pair two sizes too small for months. I can remember that a girl from the town had different socks and dresses every day for school and we were so envious. But there were great facilities: it wasn’t until I came to live in England that I saw an outside toilet.”

Sally estimated there were about ninety girls in the orphanage during her time there.
22
Each girl had a number: hers was no.13. When she was six she started to help clean out the convent chapel. ‘I thought it was exciting at first. Not later on. We cleaned out the rooms, corridors, classrooms. We swept and dusted and scrubbed. Paying for our mothers’ sins, I suppose. The nuns didn’t have a lot of work to do, except for Mother Dymphna. The girls did the work.’

Much of Sally’s story of her childhood was of the affection she had received from Sister Dymphna, who had looked after her in the laundry when she was a baby, and with whom she was still in frequent contact. And of her maltreatment by Mother Bernadette. ‘At night Bernadette would hit us on the head with the bell if we were talking, but as we got older the nuns didn’t treat us so roughly because they relied on us more for work. There’s one thing I’ll never forget because it was so upsetting. Mother Bernadette got Lal Smith sent to the reformatory in Limerick. She was only twelve at the most, and she was always good for a giggle, kept us in fits. She never did wrong, nothing wrong at all. Poor Mother Dymphna, how she cried about it! Fag O’Reilly
23
used to threaten to send us to Limerick too. But Mother Carmel was the worst of all. She was a wicked, wicked woman. Dymphna thinks that my fear of Mother Carmel started when I saw her putting the others in cold baths. She must have terrified me as a baby. I emember hiding under the Abbess’ petticoats when Carmel came to take us to her class, and when she’d gone, the Abbess saying “All right! You can come out now.” I was petrified of Mother Carmel. She used to beat me with a stick and for the three years I was in her class I wet the floor—Mother Dymphna would always dry my drawers. I hate to say it but I think Carmel must have been a sexual deviant.’
24

Bridget Rooney was born in the same year as Sally Johnson but she did not go into the orphanage until she was twelve, in 1953. Her mother had died. Her father had his two daughters committed to St Joseph’s and his two sons to the Industrial School in Artane. The children never saw him again. ‘I remember Inspector O’Connor bringing us to Cavan on a train. “It’s going to be a nice place,” he said. A couple of months later he came to see if we were all right. I was dressed up in my best clothes, and two nuns sat with me while he was talking to me. I wanted to tell him about the place but I was too frightened.’

‘We were treated like a herd of cattle, brought up like animals. We always sat in the back seats at school and we were called “orphans”. We knew the other children at school were better than us, but I came from a nice home. In that way it was worse for me than for my younger sister, because I could remember. Anyone that wasn’t good at school was taken out to work in the orphanage. They did that to me when I was thirteen. We got up at 5 a.m. and every day we had to go to Mass at 6 a.m. I had to wash and starch all the nuns’ clothes and habits. My fingers used to be bleeding. And we had to scrub miles of corridors. We went to bed at 7.30, even the big girls. Children were locked up as a punishment, sometimes for two days with nothing to eat. Mother Andrew did that. She was the most vicious woman I ever met in my life. She would break up orange boxes and beat us across the back. I know some girls were scarred for life by what happened to them in Cavan. Fear was inside of you all the time.’

Sally said that many of the children in her years there had been orphaned by tuberculosis. ‘Families were split up in the orphanages; you’d see sisters crying for their brothers. Some of the relatives, she said, kept in contact with the children. ‘There were two tinker children in St. Joseph’s, and their parents or uncles and aunties always came in to see them every time they came near Cavan. They’d bring money, sweets, fruit and cake.’

Department
of
Education
Annual
Report
1945:
There
was
no
serious
interference
on
the
part
of
parents
or
relatives.

Two women we met, Jane and Eilís, grew up in Cavan town and went to St Joseph’s national school. Jane, who came from a professional family, was there from 1947 to 1951. ‘The orphans were sad and miserable-looking. They had a smell as though they had wet themselves, mixed up with disinfectant, and there was an aura of fear about them. They always looked cold, as though they didn’t have enough on underneath their calico dresses. We were always aware that they were different. The nuns created this by segregating them and by beating them more than the rest of us. You were never supposed to get friendly with them, and they weren’t allowed even to play with us at break time, they had to go back to the orphanage. You’d never hear them laughing and larking around. We all knew something was wrong about the way they were treated and we felt sorry for them.’

Eilís’ background was also middle-class. She attended the national school from 1950 to 1953, between the ages of eight and eleven. ‘Some of the children in my class were still scarred from the fire. We used to see the older ones looking after the smaller children: they were like mothers to them. I went to the school after a small Protestant country school and I was shocked by the corporal punishment. Mother Carmel was the most incredibly cruel woman I have ever met. She always carried a cane strapped on to her waist beside her crucifix. Once she took a girl away into a room to beat her, she was a simple girl with a big, vacant face, and I said, “You can’t beat her,” and ran after them. She turned to me and said, “You’d get it too if it wasn’t for who you are.”

Eilís said that many people from the town had taken their children away from the school after the fire, but they began to drift back gradually because of what was perceived as the nuns’ more enlightened approach. ‘The orphans were well-dressed then, better almost than we were. I remember going over to the orphanage and noticing their toys. I rather envied them really. My strongest memory is of being sent to the orphanage to fetch something and seeing a family coming in. There were four children with their father. He looked completely dazed, and the children had looks of absolute horror on their faces. I shall always remember it. I said to the nun “Who are they? Where do they come from?” and she replied, “We never know the backgrounds of the children who come in here.” There was a big poster in the orphanage with the caption “The Family Who Prays Together Stays Together”. Even at the time I thought that it was an odd place to have it.’

*       *       *

Department
of
Education
Annual
Report
1953:
‘During
the
School
year,
on
the
advice
and
with
the
approval
of
Dr
McQuaid
[Archbishop
of
Dublin]
arrangements
were
made
by
members
of
the
Religious
Orders
conducting
Industrial
Schools
for
the
establishment
of
a
short
course
in
child
care
for
Managers
and
Sisters
in
charge
of
Children’s
Homes
 . . .
There
is
every
reason
to
believe
that
among
the
benefits
of
this
course
will
be
further
improvement
in
school
standards,
the
increased
welfare
and
happiness
of
the
children
in
the
schools
and
a
better
preparation
of
them
for
life.
25

Most of our information on life in St Joseph’s came from thirteen girls born between 1946 and 1954. All were in their twenties when we first met them. Some had been put in as babies, none after the age of four. Many of them thought they were ‘illegitimate’. Some we met several times, others only once. From another, now living in Australia, we received a letter. Several of those we tried to contact refused to talk to us. In all essentials the memories of the girls we met corroborated each other. Only details differed. Inevitably, the dominant impressions were created by the surrogate mother-figures who supervised them.

Mothers Bernadette and Andrew appear to have been in charge until the mid-50s. Unpleasant incidents involving Mother Andrew were often mentioned, but Mother Bernadette was remembered with affection by this age group, who were very young during her tenure, if not by those who were older.

Tina Martin, born in 1951, told us, ‘Mother Bernadette was nice, I’m sure. I remember going hand-in-hand up the yard with her, and her giving us a Smartie each and telling us to look at the stars.’ Maureen Harty said, ‘Mother Bernadette was marvellous. We were all individuals to her.’ Ann-Marie Hanley, born in 1947, remembered ‘You could go to Mother Bernadette with your arms out if you were crying.’ Perhaps her kindness, even love, towards them was due to the fact that she had looked after them when they were small. Even from Sally, whom she persecuted, we got this picture of her: ‘The babies had their food made up by Mother Bernadette. She would mash in a soft boiled egg into potatoes, all on one platter, and then go with one spoon round the circle of them, their mouths opening like little birds.’

Elizabeth Bright told us, ‘You felt free with Mother Bernadette. You could run round in your bare feet. You could go to her if you hurt yourself. When she left, there were about sixty of us holding on to the railings, crying at the gate. And then
they
came—Mother Anne and Mother Catherine. With them it was a reign of terror.’

These two nuns appear to have been in charge from the mid-50s to the mid-60s. According to several of the girls, Mother Anne immediately set about improving their living conditions. Ann-Marie: ‘When she first came we had terrible old rags of clothes and she made everyone of us blouses and maroon-coloured pinafore dresses, all pleated. There were about fifty of us then, though my number was still no. 70 because you held on to your number regardless. She got a nun in Gormanstown
26
to make us all jumpers with lovely warm collars. They were really very smart. Each of us had different colours so that we wouldn’t look the same. We were never allowed to have long hair before she came, but she let all the children’s hair grow and she got us lovely ribbons. It was a complete new way of life for us. She got swings put up and gave us balls to play with. Before that you’d be told to go out and play and you’d have nothing to do.’